Friday, July 11, 2008

IAF using Iraqi airspace?

The IDF and Iraq’s defense ministry deny that Israeli air force is using Iraqi airspace to prepare for attacks on Iran. The claim is obviously part of Iran’s propaganda campaign which is based on deterrence through threats to expand the war. After all, to travel the 200 miles that separate Iraq’s most southern territory from Bushehr in five minutes means that aircraft will have to fly at the speed of Mach 3. This is technically impossible, and it gets even more impossible if the presumed airbases from which Israeli aircraft are supposed to operate (like Assad and Tallil) are many miles farther to the northwest in Iraq.

Anyway, if I were the PM of Iraq, I would gladly allow the Israeli air force to use the desert south of Samawa as a forward operating base-Tehran’s threat to Israel’s long-established democracy and to Iraq’s fledgling democracy must be stopped at all costs.